There were more animals that were taken care of. “I had seen it on our farms over in Georgia, and then when we brought those farms over here ,” Dan says. Today organizations like Ducks Unlimited and Quality Deer Management are based on this concept. “It’s a stewardship of knowing which animals to take, which not to take, and how big to let the herd get,” Dan says. From there they managed the size of herds, ensuring that animals lived until a mature age and were not overharvested. “There was not money spent on attracting and holding wildlife.”īut with the introduction of feeders, devices that were set on timers distributed corn at regular times, and they’d plant alfalfa and other plants that attract and hold wildlife. The way Dan describes it, since World War II hunting had been a “happenstance sport.” ”If you happened to run into animals, so be it,” he explains. Today Moultrie Feeders is the number one feeder-selling company in the industry and a leader in game cameras and game management technology.Īlong with the Moultrie brand of feeders came a new concept in the hunting industry: game stewardship. ” Before long, you could buy a Moultrie game feeder at Sam’s, Walmart, Kmart, and every major merchant in the U.S. “Every year until this point has always been a greater year. “People would say, ‘I want 10 of those, I want 10 of those,’” Dan says. “Before I ever got the first 10 built, all my buddies were saying, ‘I’ll take one, I’ll take one, I’ll take one.’”Īt the time Dan, who has a business degree from Auburn, was working for Southern Company in employee benefits, but soon he’d been in the feeder business. “He drew out a schematic on a napkin and said, ‘Pick out these parts and we’ll build 10,’” Dan recalls. In the late 1970s Dan’s brother owned a company that designed electronics, and at Christmas one year Dan shared his idea to create something that kicked out corn to feed deer and other animals. And it was on that property where Dan got the idea for a feeder. The older gentlemen in the area would ask Dan if he was “buuurd” hunting (referring to quail with their Southern drawl), but he was usually looking for deer. Dan grew up in Vestavia Hills and graduated from VHHS in 1975, but his dad taught him and his brother to hunt and fish at their farm that bordered Callaway Gardens property in Harris County, Georgia. Hunting and fishing run in Moultrie blood. But the most frequent visitors-turned-friends he and his wife Patti hosted over the years were officially here on business: Walmart executives (“everyone but Sam Walton”), Cabela’s board of directors, Academy Sports heads, you name it. He always let customers take the first shot and take down the bigger animals, but that didn’t stop him from filling the lodge with the heads of mule deer, white tail, moose from Alaska, caribou, zebras and nilgai, an animal released originally from India in 1905 that Dan calls the “best wild game meat in the world”-and let’s just say it would take a long time to count them all.įramed photos throughout the lodge tell countless stories, of visits from country music singer Randy Owen, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, Auburn Coach Pat Dye, Alabama Coach Gene Stallings and even former Vestavia City Schools Superintendent Jamie Blair. For most of his 40-year career in the hunting industry, he led executives into its woods to hunt and fish. What they don’t know (as far as we can tell) is that the man who invented the device is often watching them from the lodge up on the hill.ĭan Moultrie knows all 2,000 acres of this land, known as Summerfield, like the back of his hand. They know what time the corn is coming, sputtering out of a dark cylindrical feeder. Fifteen or so stand on a peninsula jutting out into a small lake, posing as if they knew a magazine was coming out to photograph them. Lakes and ponds for sale near me.The deer show up each afternoon around 3:00.
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